I’m not sure we’re talking about the same visual web builders as each other… because the ones I use are amazing and, just based off of reactions to this article, I’m not alone in thinking this. Webflow, for example, is pretty much the gold standard. If you haven’t used it, I’d really encourage you to take a look. Itssss awesome. New tools are on the way as well. Lots of fun times are ahead for our industry.

To the second points… I, nor anyone else, is going to be able to change the way HTML works. It’s basically like gravity at this point. Yes, it would be awesome if I could fly around this room with just a thought, but I can’t, so my dreams can remain dreams, and my feet remain planted on the ground. Never will I ever say that HTML is perfect. Far from it. CSS is frustrating, complicated, and tiresome to work with. It is being improved slowly over time with things like Flexbox and CSS grid. (Both of which, I might add, are more powerful that any constraints or layout behaviors in non-box design tools)

That’s just the point though. We need to understand how HTML and CSS work, how they breaks, and how to wield them. They are HARD. The lack of grappling with them has led to designers making designs that are totally unrealistic. We should should feel the pain that our designs will create, so that we can give alternative solutions to alleviate the pain instead of just throwing together some uniformed documentation that’s riddled with assumptions.

I do agree that a lot of these problems can be helped with great collaboration. I have the benefit of working in such an environment at Asurion, where my teammates are just an arms length away. This, however, still is not a perfect scenario and it’s much more difficult for distributed teams. I’m advocating in not an absence in communication, but a clearer form of it.

Now, to the point in your second comment about creating a guidelines file… Do we really want to do that? Because, in my experience, those are the absolute bane of all existence. They’re nearly impossible to stay in sync with an evolving design, full of assumptions, and time consuming. With the amount of work I already have to do, I’d think that asking tools to take away that step of the process would be better. Also, when I have used tools like Webflow in the past to spec up in HTML, it’s ALWAYS resulted in better and more accurate development than any spec sheet I’ve ever made. Plus, it’s always in sync.

I’m also not sure why my critique of the word “artboard” hit so close to home. Call it Kevin, for all I care. The point is that it’s a term that’s rooted in the print industry. Pages are tangible. Divs are real. Components are understandable. Wrappers are a clear concept. Heck, even storyboards refer to a concept in iOS. Artboards are not a thing. 🤷‍♂️